By Shinan Barclay
I awoke to a silent chill. In my cottage, no clocks blinked, no refrigerator hummed. In this rural Oregon coast area, power pauses are frequent: a minute, an hour, sometimes three. Then, eventually there's that cascade of welcome sound -- buzz, blink, hum and whirr -- as radio, refrigerator, clock, computer, TV, heater and answering machine snap back to life.
I've made it through numerous power failures. No light, no heat, no sound -- all that I can handle. But I can't function without morning coffee. I could have built a fire on the stone patio outside my back door and heated water. But it was pouring rain. I could have hiked up the hill to my neighbor's, to see if Jenn had coffee perking on her camp stove. But wind whipped through tree branches. At least the phone was working.
I telephoned my boss. "It's going to be a long time before the lines are repaired," she said. "Hunker down. Work's cancelled. There's emergency food and shelter in town at the Methodist Church." Groping in the dim morning light, I excavated a lantern and my down sleeping bag from the back of my closet. I set the lantern on the kitchen counter, reread the instructions, struck a match and lit the mantle. Continue...
